Slow Mornings Are What Every Writer Needs
5AM cold showers are so 2006
Waking up and immediately jumping into a stressful task is like drinking a mug of hot tea and then immediately chomping on ice.
It’s unpleasant, it shocks your body cells and it leaves nasty scars over time.
That’s what happens when you try to write immediately after waking up. Serious writing, I mean, in your genre of choice. Serious writing is stressful (let’s be honest, it is), and high stress on a just-awake mind wires you the wrong way and impairs all the mental recovery you made overnight. Result? You’re nervy and irritable, and you don’t even end up writing that much.
Instead, for the past month or so, I’ve been easing into my creative writing with a slow morning.
And it’s significantly boosting my mental health and my output.
A slow morning is exactly what it sounds like — a relaxed start to your day, with soothing activities that ease you out of your sleep state and prepare you gently for a productive day.
Ideally, you’d want to follow up a slow morning with an intense creative writing session (as I try to do). However, even if you have a day job that needs your attention first, a slow morning sets you up to be relaxed — which translates into better writing whenever you do set aside the time.
To be effective, a slow morning has to have a structure. That might sound counterintuitive, but structure doesn’t have to be stressful. It just means having a fixed few things that you do each morning to wake yourself up, feel relaxed and get into creative mode without any teeth-gnashing or self-guilting.
Here’s what I like to do on slow mornings:
- Get out of bed— what it says on the label. More often than not I end up checking my phone, but I’m working on bringing that down.
- Brushing teeth and skincare — I love high-quality skincare and how it makes my skin feel. This also helps to rub the residual sleepiness right off.
- Water — a big glass. I’m supposed to take vitamins with it, which I don’t always remember, but I try.
- Coffee — a homemade quad-shot cappuccino with oat milk. My main motivator for getting out of bed.
- Morning pages — a recent habit I’ve begun. I write down whatever comes to my mind, with a general focus on my goals and how they’re coming along.
- Chilling — just being. Playing with my cats, chatting with my spouse, reading a book.
I may sometimes switch the order around, like skincare after coffee if I’m really craving coffee, but these are all things that happen over the course of the first hour after I get up.
Why do I do these specific things?
- They aren’t high-effort
- They were mostly things I was doing anyway (I’ve had a regular skincare routine for over four years now)
- They don’t require much energy
- They aren’t timebound — as long as they all happen over an hour or so, I’m good
Now here’s the not-so-fun part:
To consistently achieve a slow morning, you need to have a tighter night. In other words, you need to stay up and finish any pending tasks before you go to bed.
A lot of people don’t like that. They prefer relaxed nights with wind-down routines after wrapping up work by 6pm. And yes, ideally, it would be nice if we could have both cozy nights and slow mornings.
But I’m going to assume you balance writing with a day job, which means you need to make the best of the time you have.
And between the two, I’d take a longer night any day.
Here’s why. When we go to bed with pending tasks, the first thought we get when we wake up is: “Oh crap, I need to do that thing.” Your mind is stressed, you rush yourself to get to the task, and you do it with one eye on the clock to check how close you are to completing it. And even after you finish the task, the stress of having done it late lingers. You’re assailed by thoughts like: “Was it okay? Will the other person be mad at me? Will I get fired? Did I make any mistakes? Will those mistakes get me fired?” None of this, as you can imagine, is conducive to creative writing.
By contrast, if we finish up at night, it may make for a longer workday, but at least we can go rest up after. Any stress you feel about the task dissipates overnight — and you wake up with the satisfaction of knowing that the work is done, there’s nothing pending, and you’re free to be as creative as you like.
A fair trade-off, I’d say.
Slow mornings look different for everyone. Things that relax me might not relax you, and vice versa. When designing your own slow morning, here’s what I recommend keeping in mind:
Start at a reasonably early hour
I can never wake up at 5AM except for vacation departures. Don’t torture yourself — not everyone is an early bird.
At the same time, lying in too late leaves you with less time to pace yourself, especially if you have a 9-to-5.
I’d recommend waking up two hours before your workday begins so you have enough time to enjoy your morning, get in some writing and freshen up before work. So if your workday starts at 7, you can have your slow morning routine between 7 and 8, and then get in an hour of writing time before work.
Speaking of time…
Keep the routine to an hour max
The whole point of a slow morning is to keep things easy and free of heavy work. Too much of that, however, and you risk getting distracted by social media or job-related things. I keep my slow mornings between 45 and 60 minutes, depending on how heavy my workday is. It’s plenty of time, I promise.
Don’t pick components that are an effort
Your goal isn’t to crush some crazy routine you can Tweet about. Writing is the goal. You need to do things that will set you up for a good writing session. Keep it simple, streamlined and low-effort.
Involve some kind of writing
This helps you make a natural transition to the actual writing. I love my morning pages — you might want to keep a gratitude journal, or write about the dreams you had at night, or just make a list of things you plan to do today. Whatever you pick, write it out by hand in a notebook you like with a pen you like. It’s extremely satisfying, and it delays the device encroachment a little longer.
Don’t deny yourself coffee
This holier-than-thou attitude that some folks have about coffee is ridiculous.
You’re a writer. Writers need coffee. Or tea. Or whatever delicious hot non-alcoholic beverage gets you going. Ditch the shame, bring out the mugs.
But drink water first
On this one, I agree with the experts. Water really is good for you, and you’re probably drinking less than you ought to. Have a big glass (or two) right after brushing and before you set the coffee going. And yes, I’m talking about plain water. No flavoured or infused nonsense.
Exercise only if you like morning exercise
Exercise is important, but if morning exercise doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t force yourself. You’ll just feel grumpy, you won’t be able to do the reps that well, and the grumpiness will sour your creativity. I actually prefer evening workouts in general, because I can sleep off any soreness rather than try to type with shaky shoulders.
Avoid music or screens
The screen part is obvious, but audio input can also be jarring first thing in the morning. If you really want to listen to music, you can try playing some ambient instrumentals on your speakers at a low volume. Avoid headphones or AirPods.
Give yourself enough chill time
Reading. Knitting. Doodling. Painting, Watering your plants. Playing with your pets. Meal prepping. Pick an activity that calms you and immerse yourself in it.
And it doesn’t have to be the same activity all the time — some days you might feel like drawing, other days you might want to catch up on your latest read. The goal is to allow yourself to do soothing recreational things that you may not always have time for during the day. Even fifteen minutes makes a difference.
I’ve never been good with strict routines and on-the-dot schedules. But too much freedom wasn’t helping either. With slow mornings, I discovered a happy medium that:
- lowers my stress levels
- injects my day with a dose of calm
- helps me transition out of the sleepy state without any jarring or forcing
- prepares my mind for creative mode
- lets me enjoy my coffee with my spouse before we start work
- gives me a reason to wrap up pending tasks at night rather than putting them off
- gives me something to look forward to as soon as I wake up
Writing is hard, and creative writing is the hardest of all. With very few external motivators, it’s on us to set up systems that help us show up every day, consistently and sincerely, so we can hone our craft and tell the best stories we possibly can.
I struggled with that for many years, but with the slow morning routine things are finally looking up. And they will for you too. :)
Support my work by buying me a coffee! 😎
